


hard feelings (these are what they call)

by maisy_daisy



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: All For The Game - Freeform, Andreil, Fluff, Kandreil - Freeform, Kevin Day birthday one shot, M/M, Polyamory, Soulmate AU, aftg, kevineil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:20:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22779349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maisy_daisy/pseuds/maisy_daisy
Summary: Three lives. Three souls. Three hearts. And an abundance of scars.Kevin Day knows that the soul recognizes home, even when the eyes do not.Or, a kandreil soulmate! au in which soulmates first meet each other in dreams and share wounds in life. When soulmates finally meet in person, the wounds fade away. [Kandreil one shot in honor of Kevin Day’s birthday (Feb. 22)]
Relationships: Kandreil, Kevin Day/Andrew Minyard, Kevin Day/Neil Josten, Kevin Day/Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 24
Kudos: 261





	hard feelings (these are what they call)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: vivid descriptions of scars and mentions of abuse. Thank you so much for reading but please do not continue if this is too much for you. Your health is incredibly more important! In honor of Kevin Day’s birthday, here’s a kandreil soulmate! au one shot. This is dedicated to @Essence29 for getting me to write this in the first place and for being so kind and insightful in all our conversations.
> 
> Work title from Lorde’s song Hard Feelings

It wasn’t the dreams that scared Kevin Day.

It was the scars. 

Some, a deep red. Others, a faded white boring out of his dark skin. The ghost of an iron’s fire darkened below his collarbone. Zig zags on his wrists. On his thighs, an expanse of burn marks, like charcoal left to rot.

He never experienced the moment these wounds struck. One hour, a blank canvas. The next, marked. But it wasn’t art.

It was unfiltered, unpoetic, unromantic _hell_. With every burn and every blemish, a web of cicatrices formed as a brutal reminder: a torment that Kevin would always be subjected to, but could do nothing about.

It’s a sickening feeling, uselessness.

But the grief he endured from the scars wasn’t self-directed. It was a selfless grief that could only exist at the expanse of another. A grief that hovered between despair and determination to do anything to make the pain stop for the other person.

A grief that screamed _for the love of everything that is, don’t fucking touch them again._

Kevin never experienced what gave him the marks. He barely felt them, either. But he knew that someone, somewhere, felt every touch. Every burn. Every cut.

And the knowledge that the one at the end of every blow was the person Kevin was fated to fall in love with—

Well, pain came in many forms. The scars were one thing. But the emotional abuse was another beast.

There were dreams too, as mentioned before. Horrible, nasty dreams. Dreams of fire and cars and knives. Crimson rivers surged like a raging ocean and threatened to drown Kevin when he mistakenly dreamed too long. Angry men and angrier kids were frequent visitors. Blonde hair cut short. Piercing blue eyes. A sadistic smile, arms covered in black.

More than once, he tried calling out to these shadows. To anyone. But no one ever answered. 

Kevin was tired of dreaming. He was even more exhausted from not knowing how to stop the pain, not knowing how to help his—

Soulmate was too strong a word. No, not too strong. Just unfamiliar. Undeserving. Kevin Day didn’t understand the concept of soulmates, not fully. It’s not as if he felt like half a soul without someone else.

He didn’t feel like anyone in the first place. He wasn’t missing one person. He was missing more than that.

Purpose. Shelter. Refuge.

He wanted—needed—a refuge, like a sinner needed redemption.

It wasn’t until Kevin almost died at Riko Moriyama’s hands that refuge miraculously found him.

• •

It was an accident, apparently.

Riko almost committed murder, and the courts ruled it an accident. In fact, the man was practically still a saint to the judicial system.

Riko was not a “potential killer” to the law. No, not even close. Because Kevin was not dead. Because the physical damage was only a ruined hand. Because despite the bruises on his chest and the tears in his eyes and the verbal torture stained in Kevin’s mind, Kevin’s face was, to the naked eye, untouched.

Potentiality had no place in the legal system. Law was not potential, but tangible. And the simple, less paperwork required, _tangible_ decision was to declare Kevin’s near death an accident.

While this ruling was being declared and Kevin was focusing on not finishing what Riko started out of sheer lack of hope, two other boys in two completely different states woke to another morning. One arose in confusion and the other in mild disinterest to find their own left hands deformed and twisted in a crumpled, dejected state.

One boy wondered how it happened. 

The other wondered if it would happen again. 

Kevin wondered, if he died, would someone, somewhere in the world, die as well? 

He wouldn’t risk it, for their sake.

Life, slowly and bittersweetly, continued on.

• •

Like before, it was an accident. But unlike before, the results were not violent.

This time, Kevin accidentally found them. It was years later, when the dreams had gotten worse and the scars less frequent. Riko was physically out of the picture, Kevin’s consolation prize for moving—nearly running—across the country. The biggest surprise, however, was not how he found them, but the who. Or, more accurately, the _w_ _ho’s_. Plural.

He recognized Andrew Minyard first. When they first met, the latter was not “Andrew” to Kevin, but the angry, blond teenager from Kevin’s dreams. Kevin only noticed the anger from a sixth, non-visual sense that came with the stark realization _why_ he could tell in the first place. To most anyone else, Andrew was impassive. Uncaring. Practically empty. 

But Kevin never cared about the visual. He knew the soul.

_Soulmate_. Such an unfamiliar word.

But Andrew wasn’t unfamiliar. Even many of the scars on his body matched Kevin’s. Though, that went without saying, of course. 

When Andrew first touched Kevin (and it was Andrew who first touched, because boundaries were set no matter how fated the two were supposed to be), Kevin’s scars disappeared. Not all of them, not even close. But many did, the ones that still clung to Andrew’s own skin. At the same time, Andrew’s left hand fully healed, along with the scratches and tears on his back. 

Not all of them. But still, many.

Neil Josten was the bigger surprise, though, by this point, it shouldn’t have been one at all. When Kevin and Andrew first saw him, his eyes weren’t the same blinding blue Kevin had seen in his dreams. His face was slightly darker, a result of a life on the run under the California sun. Even his hair was dyed to a foreign shade. Everything about the Butcher’s Son screamed _imposter_. 

But to the two people who mattered the most, he was achingly familiar.

That damned sixth sense again. 

And when Neil found solace in Kevin’s arms, and Andrew’s grip wrapped firmly, protectively, around the nape of Neil’s neck, the iron print faded from two of the three’s chests. The scars of a bullet healed, gone. Skin marred from the bite of a blade, the shadow of a cleaver, mended. 

It took years for the dreams to heal. With time came the understanding that not all wounds could be cured. These wounds were not the visual ones. But neither Kevin nor Andrew nor Neil ever cared about the visual. They knew the soul.

Soulmates. So unfamiliar, so foreign. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, not even tangible.

But, in the rare mornings when Kevin wakes before the other pieces of his heart do, with Neil’s head resting calmly on Kevin’s chest, and Andrew’s arm thrown defensively across them as he sleeps, Kevin is content to not completely understand. Because despite everything that he’s ever seen or endured or felt, Kevin is no longer empty.

He’s alive. He’s fulfilled. He’s safe.

Neil shifts in his sleep, head burrowing further into Kevin’s embrace. Andrew tightens his hold like a promise as if, even unconscious, he’ll never let go. 

And Kevin knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Have a good day, spread peace and love, yadda yadda. You can find me on tumblr at @ravens-play-exy-too


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